[This story examines a recent study of the potential of a film that provides both male and female perspectives in an unusual split-sphere 360° video format to create empathy and attitude change. The story is from Medium, where the original includes three different images. It’s worth looking at the study itself (via Dropbox), in which presence and other aspects of the technology and experience are considered. A related recent story worth a look is “Walking in another’s virtual shoes: Do 360-degree video news stories generate empathy in viewers?“ in Columbia Journalism Review. –Matthew] [Image: Source: UTURN creator Nathalie Mathe] The…

[This story from MIT News describes what sounds like a valuable course at MIT, one that explicitly covers presence. My colleague Laura Zaylea and I have been doing something similar in a cross-course collaboration (Emerging Media Production and Psychological Processing of Media), initially focusing on 360 videos and augmented reality. If you teach or know of other courses like this, please let me know (at [email protected]). –Matthew] [Image: In MIT’s hands-on humanities class CMS.339 (Virtual Reality and Immersive Media Production), students are grappling with multiple dimensions of making virtual reality, from technical challenges, to philosophical questions, to the art of…

[This story from Inverse describes a clever new way to manipulate VR users’ perceptions to create more natural walking (and thus presence) experiences in virtual worlds. –Matthew] [Image: Source: Digital Trends] VR Worlds Where You Can Actually Walk Around Are on the Way Goodbye, room-limited HTC Vive games! By Mike Brown May 30, 2018 Ready to go on an infinite journey through virtual reality? Researchers at Stony Brook University, working with Nvidia and Adobe, announced on Tuesday that they’ve taken a big step toward making virtual worlds feel vast and expansive. By manipulating the eye’s natural movements, the researchers say…

[Although it doesn’t cover specific steps to bring about institutional change, this opinion column from Times Higher Education makes the compelling argument for the incorporation of presence-evoking technologies in higher education. –Matthew] [Image: CAVE2 at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Source: UIC] Universities should immerse themselves in virtual reality Embracing immersive content would aid public engagement and bring research and teaching closer together, argue Vincent Tong, Sam Smidt and Matilda Katan May 3, 2018 By Vincent Tong, Sam Smidt and Matilda Katan While universities bill themselves as pioneers of technology, they are…

[This story from Artsy describes the trend towards technology-based experiential art and attractions, focusing on Meow Wolf’s installation in Santa Fe (coming soon to Denver, Las Vegas and elsewhere); the company’s CEO “envisions a future where the lines between things like art, theme parks, role-playing games, and augmented reality will be blurred. The emerging term, he explains, is ‘alternative reality.’” The original story includes a large photo gallery, and for more information see Meow Wolf’s website and a 2:20 minute video on YouTube (which will lead you to other videos). Two related news stories from the last few weeks may be…

[Thank you to everyone who joined us for PRESENCE 2018 last week in Prague, either in person or virtually. Special thanks to organizing committee members SongYi (Grace) Lee, Kun Xu, Hocheol Yang and Jihyun Kim. For me at least, it was another rewarding, intellectually invigorating and very enjoyable combination of presentations and informal discussions about different aspects of a fascinating topic. In our concluding session we identified a variety of challenges we face as presence scholars and we’ll be following up soon on some of the steps we developed towards addressing them. In the meantime, the story below is about…

[One last news item before ISPR Presence News takes a break for a few weeks: This piece from Big Think considers the role of VR and other presence-evoking technologies in defining, and controlling, our personal reality; the original includes more images and three videos. –Matthew] [Image: You are who you are because of your environment. What happens in a virtual world? Credit: Shutterstock/Big Think] How will virtual reality change your mind’s consciousness? May 16, 2018 by Derek Beres Over a half-century ago, Canadian professor and philosopher Marshall McLuhan wrote one of the most influential books on media theory ever. Understanding…